Aloha,
Caduceus Books wrote:
> I think the importation of terms from other cultures and the
> transformation of their meaning to supply glamours indicates a healthy
> occult current.
I agree. Borrowing and adapting terms and concepts between cultures,
movements, traditions, whatever probably does indicate a vigorous and
healthy occult current or occultural dynamic.
Besides, who, even tough-minded academics, could actually halt the more
or less natural language process of borrowing terms? And making up, with
or without a sense of humor, new terms that vamp on other terms?
Like "sha-woman!" ;-p
Academic discourse, though, often tends to the formal and the careful and
precise use of terms. In academic usage, then, I'd hope to find a very
careful
account of important new terms and what they mean. And I, myself, would
hope that the new terms did a little more for overall understanding than
advance
an agenda for cultural politics (like being PC).
Besides, and this goes back to my own education as an ethnographer, I have
this conditioned reflex about some of these terms we all borrow. And I
admit,
in a way, my reflex can come across as snobby, as dismissive. Like when,
some
while ago, my good friend announced he was studying to become a shaman
(a Neo-Pagan style one) and I snorted coffee out my nose.
My notion of shaman was markedly different from his. Mine was
ethnographically
specific. His was a then quite novel adaptation to (post)modern
circumstances.
It took me some mulling it over to accept the realities and
possibilities of each
notion, and that neither one necessarily excluded the other.
These days, I think that we want and need to re-enchant ourselves and how
we apprehend the world we find ourselves within. Borrowing and
reinterpreting
and reworking meanings aids us in this re-enchantment.
Musing OMG! Linguistic Gender Confusion! Rose,
Pitch
|